Intellectual property verdicts make headlines for their size, but the median IP recovery is far more modest than the nine- and ten-figure awards suggest. This guide explains how American courts actually build a damages number across all four IP regimes: the reasonable-royalty floor and hypothetical negotiation of patent law, the Panduit lost-profits gauntlet, copyright's actual-damages-or-statutory-menu election under 17 U.S.C. 504, Lanham Act profit disgorgement after Romag v. Fossil, and the Defend Trade Secrets Act's three-part measure plus exemplary multiplier. It treats apportionment as the great limiter and willfulness as the universal multiplier, and it shows why the damages expert and the Daubert gate so often decide the case. It also reads the "statistics" honestly: most disputes settle, distributions are wildly skewed, and headline verdicts are routinely cut on appeal. The goal is a shared, accurate mental model that a judge, a practitioner, and a business owner can all use.